Vintage Athletes - Part 49

 Boxing Day

In Britain and some Commonwealth countries, the day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day, much to the bemusement of Americans who imagine a holiday devoted to boxing matches.  Actually, the name originated from the custom of giving a "Christmas box" of money or small gifts to servants and tradesmen on the day after Christmas.  Nowadays, it's another shopping holiday.

But I celebrate Boxing Day with photos of naked pugilists.  Last year I featured some boxing greats, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Mike Tyson, and Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali.  You can see that post here:

https://unashamedmale.blogspot.com/2022/12/boxing-day-2022.html

Today we look at some vintage boxers.

We start with the photo above by artist Thomas Eakins called James Wright and George Reynolds Nude, Boxing, 1886-1888.  There's a fascinating story behind this photo.  Eakins was the director of the art school at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  In January, 1886, Eakins had a male model remove his loincloth during an anatomy lecture with female students present.  The incident ignited a controversy.  Eakins protested that in the art world, nudity was not impropriety, but he was forced to resign.

All fifty-five of Eakins' male students and eighteen of the thirty female students threatened to resign if Eakins was not reinstated, and when he wasn't, sixteen of the male students did resign and formed their own art school, the Art Students' League, for Eakins to teach them.  Describing the school's purpose, Eakins said "The basis of study is the nude human figure."  Eakins taught them without pay.

The photograph above was taken in the studio of the Art Students' League, and the models, James Wright and George Reynolds, were among the 16 students who founded the school.

The gif above is from plate 335, called Boxing with Gloves, in Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 book Animal Locomotion.   The models are #52 and 53.  Model 52 was identified as an instructor at the Fencing and Sparring Club.

We've previously seen this photo of American boxer Billie Papke weighing in for a fight in France in 1912.  Papke was the world middleweight champion in 1908.

This 1930 photo by German photographer Gerhard Riebicke looks posed, not like a real fight.  Riebicke was an important photographer of the German Freikörperkultur (FKK) movement, which advocated nudity in the open air.  The FKK movement was popular in the 1920s and early 1930s until the Nazis banned it when they came into power in 1933.

German boxer Hein Müller won the European heavyweight title in 1930.  Photo c. 1929 by Hans Robertson.

Here's American boxer Henry Armstrong weighing in for a fight with Enrico Venturi in 1938 in Madison Square Garden.  This photo by LIFE photographer Carl Mydans was published in the Jan. 31, 1938 issue of LIFE.  In those days, even family magazines like LIFE were not prudish about rear nudity, although they did not show frontal nudity.

A photo from the same 1938 photo session by Carl Mydans shows Henry Armstrong getting rubbed down.  This photo was not published in LIFE.

Senegalese-French boxer Assane Diouf competed from 1935 to 1947.

Dutch boxer Luc Van Dam in the shower in 1949.  He held the Dutch middleweight title in the 1940s.

We end with boxers John Conteh (left) and Bunny Johnson (right) with manager George Francis (center) at Highgate Pond, Hampstead Heath, London, 1974.  Conteh held the WBC light-heavyweight title from 1974 to 1977, and Johnson was the British heavyweight champion in 1975.  Outdoors in a public park in broad daylight, these were unashamed males.